Lynwood Abram, 1926-2015 Journalism world loses a classic

Houston Chronicle reporter Lynwood Abram edits a story in 1968, when typewriters, paper and pens were still in vogue..

Houston Chronicle reporter Lynwood Abram edits a story in 1968, when typewriters, paper and pens were still in vogue..

Photo: HC Staff

Photo: HC Staff

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Houston Chronicle reporter Lynwood Abram edits a story in 1968, when typewriters, paper and pens were still in vogue..

Houston Chronicle reporter Lynwood Abram edits a story in 1968, when typewriters, paper and pens were still in vogue..

Photo: HC Staff

Lynwood Abram, 1926-2015 Journalism world loses a classic

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When Lynwood Abram reported stories for the Houston Chronicle - and he wrote, rewrote and edited thousands from 1962 through 2009 - his work was concise, organized, tight.

Once, when asked to write his own biography for the Chronicle files, he summed up his life in two sentences. He even wrote his own obituary, but it was only a few paragraphs, and half of it was devoted to survivors and honorary pall bearers.

Now, however, the job is out of his hands.

Abram, 88, died Tuesday of natural causes. While he never had a fancy title at the paper, he was a quiet and steady influence on news coverage, reporters and city editors for almost five decades.

Perhaps his particular genius was the lost art of "rewrite." Reporters at the scenes of fires, murders or other types of mayhem would find a pay phone, call him and dictate the information they had gathered. Before the reporters, usually young and impressionable, were even back at the office, Abram would have a polished story ready for the next edition of the paper.

"He was a miracle worker," said Nene Foxhall, now a United Airlines executive in Chicago. "I remember calling in bunches of jumbled notes, and he would turn them into a really well-written story with my name on it.

"Abram was classic and old school in the best sense," she continued. "He wrote beautifully, edited masterfully, and he was fast, fast, fast, trying to beat the competition. We may never see anyone like him again."

Kind, funny, supportive

Burke Watson, now a project manager for Centerpoint Energy, remembered reporting for work at the Chronicle before the sun was up and visiting with Abram, who would drop by his desk. "How you bees?" Abram would ask, listen for the response, then launch into a raunchy limerick.

"Over the years we joked and laughed a lot," Watson said, "but in serious times - I went through a divorce and my son, Jonathan, served in Iraq - he was kind and very supportive."

Watson remembered the time an assistant city editor sent Abram to cover visiting Queen Elizabeth at City Hall. Abram was a voracious student of history, particularly the English monarchy, and he used to say, "If things had gone a little differently I might have married Queen Elizabeth. We're about the same age, you know."

Lynwood Harry Abram was born in Houston on Oct. 16, 1926. His father was a salesman, his mother a stay-at-home mom, and his brother Jack, 11 years older, was a classical pianist.

As a child, Abram had rheumatic fever and spent almost a year in bed. It was then, he told friends, that he developed his passion for literature. He also learned empathy and compassion while watching his mother, who suffered from an iron deficiency before there was medication to treat it. Instead of swallowing a pill, she had to down regular servings of raw liver.

After graduating from the University of Texas in 1949, he worked at newspapers in Austin, Galveston, El Paso, Fort Worth and Riverside, Calif., in addition to his long career at the Chronicle.

In 1958, while still in El Paso, Abram married Rebekah Stiles, and immediately became the father of her two sons, Joe and Ben Simcox. A year later, the couple had their third child, Letitia, better known as Tita.

Abram was physically frail, but he embraced the switch from no children to three, said Frank Ahlgren Jr. of Austin, and another friend from the El Paso days. The two men went desert camping twice, the second time with Abram's boys, then 5 and 7.

"He wasn't the type who wanted to go camping, but he did it for the boys," Ahlgren said.

Valued friendship

Said Tita Abram Rayburn, "He taught us to be honest, to have integrity, and to value friendship. And of course, he was always funny."

Throughout his Chronicle career, Abram did more than his fair share of obits, politics and weather.

Mike Lonsford, once the Chronicle's wine writer, said people frequently would ask Abram if it was going to rain. "Lynwood would always say, 'It's raining in mah hort,' " Lonsford said. "And now his old friends feel the same way."

Abram is survived by his three children, son-in-law Robert Rayburn, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

"My dad didn't want a funeral," Tita Rayburn said, "but his ashes will be buried at Forest Park Lawndale next to his mother, father and brother."